can anyone tell me why? i was expecting to see a list of only files that begin with "2010". there are no such files in the directory, so i wasn't expecting to see anything. i must either misunderstand how DIR handles wildcards or i'm doing something stupid.

Just out of curiosity: the short names of 2011-... start with 2010 ? (the commands being DIR 2010*.*)
–
ring0Feb 3 '11 at 16:41

1

@ring0: They can based on the rule quoted in the answer I linked to. "if at least 4 files or folders already exist with the same initial 6 characters in their short names, the stripped LFN is instead truncated to the first 2 letters of the basename (or 1 if the basename has only 1 letter), followed by 4 hexadecimal digits derived from an undocumented hash of the filename, followed"
–
Dennis WilliamsonFeb 3 '11 at 17:06

that's nice (and i am aware of the various DIR options), but i'm not really asking how to get the results. I'm asking why a DIR 2010* is returning results that i would think i'd only see if doing DIR 2011*. sorry if my question wasn't clear. i edited the question's formatting to improve it.
–
Don DickinsonFeb 3 '11 at 15:23